Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is among the victims in a multimillion-dollar fraud case heard in a Missouri court, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.
On Tuesday, September 15, 38-year-old Siddharth Jawahar was sentenced to 11 years in prison, the office said in a statement. Jawahar had pleaded guilty in January to three counts of wire fraud and was ordered to pay more than $31 million in restitution to his victims after running what prosecutors described as a Ponzi-style scheme.
According to media outlets including KMOV and WENG, Kelce was referenced only briefly during the court proceedings, and prosecutors did not offer further details about the 36-year-old's connection to the case. A 2021 Forbes article reported that Kelce had been an investor in the Swiftarc Venture Labs Fund, created by Swiftarc Capital LLC, an investment firm Jawahar co-founded.
How the scheme operated
Jawahar ran Swiftarc Capital LLC and, starting in 2015, began funneling client money into a single investment, Philip Morris Pakistan, according to the prosecutors' announcement. When the value of that investment dropped, he did not inform investors and instead told them they were earning profits.
The Swiftarc Venture Labs Fund was named in the announcement as one of several corporate entities Jawahar used to carry out the fraud.
From around July 2016 to December 2023, Jawahar collected more than $35 million from investors but put only about $10 million of it into actual investments, prosecutors said. He used money from new investors to pay off earlier ones and to fund what the announcement called his lavish lifestyle.
A lifestyle funded by investor money
According to the prosecutors' announcement, that lifestyle included private jet travel, stays at luxury hotels, upscale apartments in Austin and New York, memberships at multiple private clubs across the country, extensive shopping at clothing stores, and expensive meals at high-end restaurants.
Attempts to obstruct the investigation
After charges were filed against him, Jawahar attempted to coach one of his victims into giving favorable testimony to the FBI, which investigated the case, prosecutors said. He also tried to persuade his sister to remotely wipe data from his iPhone in order to hide evidence, and is alleged to have lied about his immigration status, according to the announcement.
Kelce, who plays tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, was not identified by prosecutors as a defendant or as facing any allegations in the case. No further details on the nature or scale of his investment were disclosed in court.
